Hardness and when to alloy

OK I am getting all my first smelting equipment lined up. I should have everything in hand in a week or two. I am reading a little every day.... work a lot of hours and precious few days off so I can't read non stop.

The thought occured to me 'when should I alloy my lead?'. I have two buckets of wheel weights I want to smelt first - along with 4 large piece of pure lead that weigh 23 pounds apiece. Still not sure how to melt them due to their size, but I can start on the WWs first.

My question is, when do I alloy for a target hardness? Most of my bullet casting will be for practice ammo in .44 special, .45 Colt, .45 ACP and .40 S&W in handguns. I will very soon want to make some .30-30 bullets, but the velocities on those will of course be quite a bit higher than the handguns.

Only after I have done this a while and am comfortable with the process will I begin making hunting (harder) handgun bullets in calibers from .32 up to .475. Sooo.... when do I alloy - during smelting or during casting?

A better question might be do I HAVE to do anything to WW? What appproximate brinell hardness will WW yield? If I target 12-16 BH for handgun loads is that a good range and will WW be in that range or do I have to do something to them to get there?

And yes I am using the search feature. I am trying my best to know everything I can before I fire up the smelt the first time and either mess something up or have to do it all over again.

Many thanks
Mark

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Originally Posted by Markbo

The thought occured to me 'when should I alloy my lead?'. I have two buckets of wheel weights I want to smelt first - along with 4 large piece of pure lead that weigh 23 pounds apiece. My question is, when do I alloy for a target hardness? Most of my bullet casting will be for practice ammo in .44 special, .45 Colt, .45 ACP and .40 S&W in handguns. I will very soon want to make some .30-30 bullets, but the velocities on those will of course be quite a bit higher than the handguns.

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First: Don't alloy (blend) it together. Make ingots of each of your metals and keep them seperate and marked as to what they are.

Air cooled WW will work just fine for each of the calibers you mention including the 30-30 to over 2000 fps.

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Originally Posted by Markbo

Only after I have done this a while and am comfortable with the process will I begin making hunting (harder) handgun bullets in calibers from .32 up to .475.

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Why would you want to make them harder? Don't fall into the trap that harder is better . . . It ain't, it's only harder and that in itself can cause problems with both accuracy and leading. It is possible for some caliber/loads that a bit harder will be needed but even then around 18 is max. Even my full power 454 Casull loads work well at 18 BHN. Bullet fit in the individual firearm is far more important than alloy BHN.

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Originally Posted by Markbo

A better question might be do I HAVE to do anything to WW? What appproximate brinell hardness will WW yield? If I target 12-16 BH for handgun loads is that a good range and will WW be in that range or do I have to do something to them to get there? Many thanks Mark

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You can add up to 2% tin but it isn't mandatory, it's for mold fillout mostly with very minor hardening effect. Air cooled WW will come out about 11-12 BHN after several days of aging and should be fine for the cartridges you mention.

Hard Cast is an evil term . . . Don't fall for it.

Rick

Markbo, I am not disputing anything that Rick has said but my WW average a bit less than 10BHN. It seems that WW will measure differently from one region to another. I'll usually add about 3 oz. of tin or 6 oz. of 50/50 solder to 20 lbs of WW. The BHN does not seem to go up much but I believe that it has reduced the leading in a couple of my guns. Maybe the tin gives them more toughness. WW are known to have lead, tin, antimony and arsenic already in them so your boolit alloy is already blended for you.

BTW, "BHN" are just references (little better than a WAG) and not absolute on the hobby equipment that us boolit casters are using, don't get hung up on it.

EW

Watch some youtube videos and you can get an idea of what will happen a little better than reading. I like ot watch some of iraqveteran8888's videos. Some videos on youtube are definitely a lot better than others. Some are down right hilarious.

Also adding other metals to your lead can and will chang the boolit size and weight. Maybe not drastically, but if your slug is already barely big enough, a smaller and harder alloy may lead your barrel worse.
Until your ready to seriously hunt, any alloy will kill paper and cans DEAD.
Learning to cast good boolits is the first task. The rest will fall into place as you progress, and ask questions here.

Markbo,
Welcome to the site. A good place to get some basic information is www.lasc.us/
Glenn Fryxell and others have some really good articles about alloys, hardness, heat treating, and psi information.
It is not a guarenteed recipe book but it helped me grasp the basic concepts. The members here are also really awesome and are very willing to help out.
I only cast handgun bullets now but for low velocity target loads I use 50%WW/50%Pb, for faster loads I use 100% WW's either air-cooled or water dropped, depending on what works best. I only add tin if I need it for better fill out.
Welcome and good luck,jmsj

Thanks to all. Where would one find tin an easily separateable (don't know if that is a real word) or measureable form?

FWIW I still have several 1000 store bought cast bullets in every caliber and have worked up loads for each gun. I foresee after a learning period that my casting will be for high quality hunting bullets. I will have a lot more questions... let me get through my first smelting first

I should get that done within a week or so. I think I am just going to make some ingots out of straight WWs for now... I can always tweak that when I am ready to pour bullets.

Thanks again!
Mark

Do like Rick said, just plain old WW will do fine for now. Save the pure for trade goods or specialized loading. I prefer to melt large, large batches and then I have a known starting point. You can always juice your alloy later and it's much easier to juice 10-20 lbs than 750 lbs. Makes things easier if you screw up too!

And listen to Rick, Bhn don't really mean squat.

A BHN of 10 will do all that you want. If you have lazer cast bullets that you bought and have leading they are the cause. They are too hard for most shooting. Take and shoot them if they work for you but if they cause problems they may be used later to alloy some other lead. Please read the stickies by Glen Fryxell.

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Originally Posted by cajun shooter

A BHN of 10 will do all that you want. If you have lazer cast bullets that you bought and have leading they are the cause. They are too hard for most shooting. Take and shoot them if they work for you but if they cause problems they may be used later to alloy some other lead. Please read the stickies by Glen Fryxell.

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One of several manufacturers I have in stock and I can't remember right now (not at home) if they were one of the leading problem rounds. FWIW I have had my bores measured and all cylinders in sixguns have been cleaned up. Odd to me still that every Ruger I have has uneven and almost universally too small chamber mouths.

Anyway, that is a non-issue. BUT... ya'lls advice about hardness goes 100% against all the advice I have been getting over the last several years at Single-Actions.com. Once I get all my bulk lead melted there will definitely be a lot of questions about hardness, size, moulds, etc before the real experimenting starts. Seems Like I will have to throw out all that data and start over, huh?

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Originally Posted by Markbo

Anyway, that is a non-issue. BUT... ya'lls advice about hardness goes 100% against all the advice I have been getting over the last several years at Single-Actions.com. Once I get all my bulk lead melted there will definitely be a lot of questions about hardness, size, moulds, etc before the real experimenting starts. Seems Like I will have to throw out all that data and start over, huh?

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Ignore anything you see about cast bullets at a site like that. Follow the instructions here, and just act smug when you are out shooting all of them!

Hmmmmmmm.... These are some of the most knowledgeable sixgunners I have ever known. Many of them are members of the Shootists. Ignoring their advice seems very counter intuitive.

BUT... I am not there yet. I still have to smelt my wheel weights into ingots before I buy mods and start dropping slugs. ;-)

waksupi isn't being smug, notice he said "about Cast Boolits", not about wheel guns. When it comes to alloys, casting, sizing, loading, shooting boolits there is more solid, accurate, current info right here than all the other sites combined.

Most of the other sites that I read a lot of the posts concerning cast are simply re-hashing the old wives tales and not basing much on current tested, tried & true info.

Pay attention to cast info posted here and test and experiment for yourself, see what works for you and what doesn't. The advice you get here will gain you success far faster than learning on your own or learning the old wives tales and then trying to un-learn them. No need to ignore any info, I take all the info I can get, some of it is good, some isn't but I consider it all as part of the education of Rick.

Rick

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Originally Posted by Edubya

Markbo, I am not disputing anything that Rick has said but my WW average a bit less than 10BHN. It seems that WW will measure differently from one region to another. EW

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EW, it's not unusual for such a discrepency between your tested BHN of WW and mine. Yes, WW alloy does vary, after all it is scrap metal. It's also not unusual for BHN testers to vary, they are not laboratory grade equipment, no one could afford them if they were. It doesn't matter in the slightest if a lab tested alloy is 11 BHN, yours is 10 and mine is 12. What is important is that our readings are consistent and yours reads the same alloy the same and mine reads the same. This way our casting/loading notes for our boolits and loads are consistent.

Your correct about BHN numbers being references. This reference can be important, if you have a load that has worked well in the past and you change alloy and now it doesn't work so well you'll have an important reference or a starting point when trying to figure why. The higher the pressure or longer the range the more important such references can be. Accurate and as complete as possible the notes you keep are as important in casting as in handloading.

Rick

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Originally Posted by Markbo

Hmmmmmmm.... These are some of the most knowledgeable sixgunners I have ever known. Many of them are members of the Shootists. Ignoring their advice seems very counter intuitive.

BUT... I am not there yet. I still have to smelt my wheel weights into ingots before I buy mods and start dropping slugs. ;-)

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Markbo, I am still new to this hobby and learning everyday. But I can tell you there are people on this forum that eat, breath and defocate cast boolits and the above advice is definately correct. If you get a chance read jacketed performance with cast boolits By Veral Smith and you will see he discovered or learned much of the "new" or "correct" stuff years ago.

Markbo, tin is easily available @ Ace Hdw - look for lead-free solder. It will be 95%+ tin, with a couple trivial percent of other stuff. One pound of lead-free will sweeten 50 pounds (or more) of WW's.

Or see if you can rustle up some bar solder from an old car body shop, or wherever. I believe body solder is about 30% Sn, 70% Pb, but it only take 3rd grade math to figure how much to use to bring the alloy up to 2-3% (any more is wasteful).

Milby'53, AKA